“God only knows what it’s doing to our children’s brains.”
That’s Sean Parker, the first president of Facebook, in a 2017 interview. He was talking about the thought process of the people behind Facebook and other social media platforms. He said,
“The thought process that went into building these applications, Facebook being the first of them, … was all about: ‘How do we consume as much of your time and conscious attention as possible?’ And that means that we need to sort of give you a little dopamine hit every once in awhile because someone liked or commented on a photo or a post or whatever. And that’s going to get you to contribute more content, and that’s going to get you … more likes and comments.”
“It’s a social-validation feedback loop…” using which these companies are “exploiting a vulnerability in human psychology.”
“The inventors, creators — it’s me, it’s Mark [Zuckerberg], it’s Kevin Systrom (Instagram’s founder), it’s all of these people — understood this consciously. And we did it anyway.”
The headline below from June 20, 2024 is just one example of what it has done to our younger generation, specifically Gen Z (born after 1996). Note that Gen Z became the first generation to go through puberty along with these advancements in the technology, which has taken away a considerable portion of real-world interaction.
Jonathan Haidt, in his book ‘The Anxious Generation’, talks about how smartphones and social media are rewiring our children’s brains and the consequences of such a rewiring on our children.
The rapid spread of high-speed internet, the introduction of smartphones and social media platforms along with the over-protection of children in the real world have all contributed to this Great Rewiring. The most intense period of this rewiring was between 2010 and 2015, although it continues to date.
The rate of depression and anxiety among Gen Z increased exponentially post-2010. Depression has become two and a half times more prevalent among U.S. teens since 2010. There was a 134% increase in Anxiety among U.S. undergraduates since 2010.
Haidt proposes four reforms for a healthier childhood in the digital age:
- No smartphones before high school.
- No social media before 16.
- Phone-free schools.
- Far more unsupervised play and childhood independence (real world).
There are a host of critics too for this book. People who argue that Haidt oversimplifies the mental health problem by linking it to social media, which could effectively distract us from addressing the real causes of the mental health crisis among young people. And that Haidt’s argument is not supported by science.
Haidt’s response to them is here. He writes: If you listen to the alarm ringers and we turn out to be wrong, the costs are minimal and reversible. But if you listen to the skeptics and they turn out to be wrong, the costs are much larger and harder to reverse.
We will have to wait for more data and research to reach a somewhat agreeable point regarding this hypothesis. But if you have ever felt bad about zombie scrolling the bottomless pit of social media, Haidt’s argument might resonate with you.
